Just before the Thanksgiving holiday, I was on the road for 5 weeks straight. It started in late October with the HROA summit in Florida, followed by a Saba Global Summit and user conference, a week visiting two global member clients in D.C., then on to an SAP forum on Talent Management in Houston.  And yes, I was ready for the Thanksgiving break. 

The good thing about all the traveling is that I get a chance to immerse myself in the conversations of the moment – hearing the topics that seem to be on everyone’s minds:

• The consistent reminder that the US is no longer the center of the universe for big business decisions, and as such our corporate HR functions need to adapt quickly, altering workforce planning approaches to meet this change
• What to make of all the mergers and acquisitions in the HR systems and HR service offering space
• The role of HR in either managing, leveraging, or impacting the use of social media to conduct business
• The changing employee proposition, the need for more flexible and contract work arrangements – traditionally a tool for managing  employee cost risks, but increasingly a requested perk from critical talent pools.
  

But all of these discussions were overshadowed with a deeper discussion on HR’s true role in meeting business needs today.  HR and Talent leaders seem to be feeling that they are facing a proverbial cross-road in how the market is defining their role in today’s challenging business environment. 

This supposed cross-road could take HR in two different directions – will HR continue to be a critical support function, with a focus on keeping day to day HR needs met and a “call-us when you need us” approach to talent planning, recruiting, and development.  This isn’t necessarily a bad role: an HR function running in this manner with effective and efficient processes around a clearly defined box of available services can have a major impact on an organization. They operate as an essential support function, able to provide the appropriate data to answer business questions when needed. 

On the other hand, is HR shifting into a role that is more anticipatory and future focused, requiring sophisticated workforce planning and forecasting capabilities, ownership of social connection and communication networks, and an ability to predict future talent opportunities.  A function that informs the business direction.  

Two of the conferences I attended, the US HROA summit, (which is a great event for anyone considering HR outsourcing in the future), as well as the Saba event, provided me with an opportunity to hear the views of HR leaders on both sides of this discussion, and some of the challenges they are facing that have informed their opinions.

At the US HROA Summit, I spoke with HR Leaders ranging from SVPs of HR and Directors of HR procurement to VP’s of HR Shared Service functions and Global Shared Service Leaders; often referred to as CORE HR. These are HR leaders who hold the responsibility for million dollar outsourcing budgets in their organizations, and often the headaches that go along with owning those budgets. I met leaders from companies like P&G, Air Canada, Marriott, and Fifth Third Bank.  On the minds of these HR business leaders was everything from employee data management fields to global implementation plans. Unfortunately, as much as there was a sense of slow but solid progress in the HR outsourcing market at the event  – there was also a strong sense of frustration.

Early outsourcing clients were concerned with their inability to upgrade heavily customized systems, service providers were concerned that they had over-customized their process and systems creating difficult upgrade paths for many clients, and third-party facilitators in the market such as TPI were frustrated with the shrinking options for thier clients on both sides. Everyone was talking about creating better partnerships and updating outdated service-level agreements (SLAs) that were often viewed as roadblocks to partnership efforts. The real issues weren’t being dealt with because they hadn’t anticipated the real issues when creating the original SLAs; such as specialized regional requirements for emerging markets, increased change order requests due to contingent workforce plans, or the need for reported historical markers on all data for better HR analytics and workforce planning.  The focus for this events audience was simply on creating the capability to meet the immediate support and reporting requirements for their businesses today. 

In contrast, the following week I attended Saba’s Global Summit. The explosive key-note opening re-enacted an American Revolutionary battle, demonstrating the possible impact of a highly integrated social tool such as Saba Live on the battle, shifted into Amar Dhaliwal’s presentation on the growing demand for YouTube based video content, and ended with a thought provoking presentation from Gary Hamel, author of Leading the Revolution and Competing for the Future, on innovation and rethinking our current management models. This event also had VP’s of HR as well as HRIT directors, as well senior learning and talent professionals. The discussions at this event focused primarily on the opportunities HR faces in changing how business was accomplished in their organizations, the role HR plays in connecting their companies’ various communities, and how HR could support critical business decisions. 

Although these two events seem miles away from each other in their discussions and participants, in reality they share a closer connection than many would suspect. The common challenges and roadblocks to success heard in both events, as well as the SAP Talent Management forum, were:

• Core employee data integrity
• Managing organizational structure and reporting changes
• Definition and clarity of job roles
• Governance models for implementation and maintenance efforts
  

One organization that attended both events as a participant and solution provider was IBM, in particular IBM’s HR outsourcing team, under the BPO group.  IBM is a unique organization because internally, many would say that they have created a supporting HR function that provides enough structure to meet their practical everyday core HR needs as well as fulfill on the vision of creating a diverse, employee focused, global organization that can forecast their future HR requirements and inform business decisions with those insights. As an organization, they have also learned how to leverage the power of their people as the backbone of their business network; i.e. Sametime and several internal networking systems connect everyone in IBM to subject matter experts instantaneously, and they leverage these tools extensively to accomplish daily business.

Many would say, IBM has the size and technical capabilities to succeed at this integrated vision as no one else can, but I would put forth that they have succeeded despite their size and advanced technology capabilities. Being first to implement a technology in any area means your systems are often clunky and tied together loosely  - internal IBMers will tell you that their original internal tools are not always the most elegant systems, and replicating their path is not always the best route – they are often trailblazers.  Also, any large employee base with multiple levels of responsibility are notoriously difficult to shift both culturally and directionally  – but IBM seems to be able to accomplish these shifts effectively. So if they can do it, can smaller organizations accomplish this level of cohesion and change? The answer is yes.  IBM’s Outsourcing arm has created an effective transformation business model, helping organization through exactly this type of complex process combining  the practical HR needs for today with the capability to forecast future needs for tomorrow.

What it really comes down to, is the capacity of HR leaders to realize that their challenges are the same, no matter if they are part of the core HR function, shared services, talent management, strategic HR, or client facing HR group  – fundamentally it comes down to data and data management, governance models, and creating the ability for employees to use the data effectively. The identity crisis could be resolved.  I don’t think this is a an either/or identity - but an HR function will be more effective if it clarifies how much of its resources will be spent on planning the future versus managing today’s needs. And most importantly, an HR function eventually needs to come together with a single HR strategy and philosophy that is understood across the entire HR population as well as throughout the business – clarifying what is in scope for the HR function and what is out of scope. 

As we round out the year, and begin efforts for planning next year’s goals and business plans, I would love to hear about how you are working to clarify the role of HR for your organization.  Are you implementing a long term HR Strategy, or building a formal governance model? Is data management  and social communication strategies part of next year’s planning events? I’d love to hear about your HR planning processes, and discussions between your own internal HR functions, at Stacey.harris@bersin.com